Gone -- More Than Half Of Her

An Elementary-school Principal Drops 180 Pounds, Becoming A New Person. `It Was Like A Butterfly Coming Out Of A Cocoon,' Says Her Husband.

March 1, 2005|By Kate Santich, Sentinel Staff Writer

After Mindi Smith shed her first 20 pounds, she stood in a grocery-store aisle one day holding a big bag of kibble for her dog.

It happened to be a 20-pound bag.

"Wow," she thought. "That's a lot of weight to carry around."

After she had lost 40 pounds, her husband went with her to the store and handed her a bag to hold in each arm.

After she had lost 60 pounds, Smith hoisted two bags while her husband piled a third on top. She could barely hold it.

So after that, Mindi Smith -- the 42-year-old principal of Orlo Vista Elementary School in Orlando -- gave up the ritual. Eighty pounds was just too much to lift.

"Now I've lost triple that 60 pounds," she says, nearly 31/2 years after she began her quest for a healthy life. "I mean, that's like carrying a good-sized man on my back all day long."

On the eve of Wednesday's Great American Weigh In -- a public awareness campaign co-sponsored by the American Cancer Society and Weight Watchers -- Smith is being hailed as a sort of poster-loser. Today, 180 pounds lighter, she is less than half the size of her former self and vastly healthier.

"She's a perfect example of the fact that if you do it little by little and step by step, and you really change the way you think about food, you can turn your life around," says Weight Watchers spokeswoman Lisa Craig. "Losing weight does take a long-term commitment."

At her heaviest in 2001, Smith, then an assistant principal at Engelwood Elementary, weighed 327 pounds and wore a size 32 -- bigger than what most stores sell even in their plus-size sections. She felt tired all the time. Her joints ached so badly it hurt to walk. Just crossing a parking lot often left her winded.

Her blood pressure had risen to such dangerous levels that she had to take medication. She suffered occasional chest pain, and her heart was enlarged. Even her feet and ankles swelled.

Yet the worse she felt, the less she wanted to move -- and the more she wanted to eat.

"A lot of the eating was just out of boredom in front of the television," she says. "And I was always the type of person that, if I was under stress, I would eat. It was the one part of my life that I did not have control over."

Four years ago, her doctor asked her to make an appointment specifically to talk about her girth. Other physicians had made casual comments about it, but this particular one sat her down for a 45-minute discussion outlining the myriad health woes she faced in coming years if she stayed as heavy as she was:

Adult-onset diabetes. Disabling pain that could put her in a wheelchair. Heart disease. Stroke. Even a heightened risk of cancer.

"He handled it in more of a caring, nurturing way than `Do this or you're going to die,' " she says. "I had a picture of what my life was going to look like, and it was pretty scary."

Besides, Smith says, she was finally tired of being tired. She was tired of being self-conscious, of worrying about bumping into people or having to ask them to move so she could squeeze by. She was tired of wondering if the lousy service or the odd looks or the sometimes rude treatment was because of her size.

"I was tired of being fat," she says.

KNEW WHAT SHE WANTED

On Sept. 18, 2001, she went back to Weight Watchers. In her early 20s, she had tried the program the first time -- and lost about 35 pounds. But as she approached her goal weight, she grew complacent. She stopped going to meetings, stopped measuring her portions, stopped keeping track of what she ate. The weight came back, plus, eventually, another 100 pounds.

But this time around, her vision was clear. She could see the life she wanted, and it wasn't the one she had. This time, she knew she had to change not just her diet, but her whole relationship with food.

She went back to measuring her portions -- even using a scale at home to weigh the meat she cooked. She kept a journal. She drank 64 ounces of water a day to flush out her system. At restaurants, as much as she loathed drawing attention to herself, she requested fat-free salad dressings and inquired about ingredients and substituted, say, steamed broccoli for baked potatoes.

"I had to learn to be assertive," she says. "Some people are very apprehensive about doing that, but I haven't been to a restaurant yet that said, `No, we won't do that.' "

She also had to learn more healthful ways of handling stress than eating junk food. She would take a walk, call a friend or even go work in her yard, something she once dreaded. She started riding a bike on weekends.

Her co-workers didn't really take notice until she had lost 35 or 40 pounds. And by then, Smith vowed, there was no turning back.

"There is something within me that said, OK, if I stop losing, they're going to notice that, too, and they're going to think I quit. And that's just not me. I'm not a quitter."